Nature's mercy

At the beginning of October a tropical storm hits the Pacific coast of Central America and we lose sight of the sky for three weeks. It rains day and night; thick, oily drops falling heavily from cloying cloud. Several people lose their lives in mudslides and the main road into Panajachel is closed for a week.

By the time I get back from my visa run to Mexico, the lake has risen by almost a metre on top of the half metre or so already gained in the first half of the season. The entire lake edge is littered with semi-submerged houses and farms.

Trees arch gracefully from the water. Everyone has a new dock, and every dock is built precariously over the remains of others. The shops near the water in Santiago are filled to the ceiling.

There being no outlet, Lake Atitlan is vulnerable to weather and follows cycles of growth and recession that the locals meet with ancient acceptance.

If this had happened anywhere else it would have made international news, but the pace of this creep over six months of rain is too slow for today's press.

I arrive home to a considerably smaller farm. Reed islands have lodged themselves on our new dock, shielding the farm front with a wall of green. Kale lurches soggily from the shallows, the leaves of a baby lime tree barely surfacing. The lakeside path has shifted to run around the yoga shala, which used to lie twenty metres from the water's edge when I arrived at the farm in March.


At this rate, the entire farm will be under within a couple of years.


I fall into bed in the dark and wake up crawling in ants. I rip up my mattress and watch as hundreds of red leaf-cutters scatter, desperately collecting waxy white eggs and disappearing between the floorboards. Every surface blooms pale with mould. The eaves are strung with a dense network of dusty white spider's webs and my clothes are full of giant crickets.
My home has been reclaimed by the jungle.


I spend an exhausting day scrubbing and beating as much life from my belongings as I can. The rain beats rivers down the windows and the light fades through a grey imperceptibly tinged with pink.


Nico and I eat in silence in a damp rancho. With no residents at the moment the farm is strangely empty. At some point, the rain stops. I fail to notice exactly when.

I wash my dishes and walk outside.

Above me shines a star.


A small patch of the night sky overhead has cleared. It has been a long time, so I walk down to our new dock to watch from the water. The lake is glossy.


The atmosphere is light with shifting energy, the post-deluge air impeccably clean. A clear line divides the sky; on one side the nothingness of thick cloud, on the other sparkling pinpricks of light. I sit and watch for an hour as our world changes.


Like a magician, revealing his last secret, the sky is gradually unveiled. The line moves across the sky as the black hole recedes.


The wall of cloud slips behind Volcan San Pedro and at once the sky is infinite.

And, just like that, the rainy season comes to an end.